Online shopping has become a staple of how customers purchase goods and services. Shopping in brick and mortar stores is quickly giving way to the capacity to use online technology to offer and buy products. All manner of merchandise may be found online from clothing to food, experiences and access to other network and data. This trend will only continue to grow as will the need for businesses to implement new technology and offer their customers less complicated ways to purchase.
Shopping online is often the customer's ideal way to locate a product that they wish to purchase. The online shopping universe is also an ideal way to compare prices and find comparable products. However, the process of actually filling in the needed information in order to finalize the purchase often takes more time as compared to that in a brick and mortar store. The need to input data, such as name, credit card, email address and delivery location creates a delay that may be frustrating for customers. The need to create a password or remember a password is also a source of frustration for prospective customer.
Before the advent of online shopping, delays like this were nonexistent since there was no need to enter this type of information, and frustration with passwords were nonexistent since passwords themselves were nonexistent. Businesses now strive to duplicate the easy purchasing process in the online world. This has led to the need for many vendors to focus on eliminating steps in the process of finalizing a purchase by storing much of the information needed for transactions and remembering customers when they are shopping on websites. Further, the click or the tap of the screen is the irreducible unit of user interaction. The number of times a customer needs to click their mouse or tap their screen has come to define the amount of time and effort asked of the shopper. A reduction in the number of steps to complete a transaction is preferred by vendors and customers.
Throughout online shopping environments a customer will find various manifestations of checkouts that promise a limited number of clicks. The “two-click” or even “one-click” checkout promises the shopper the minimum action to complete a transaction. The end goal of this process is to expedite the final transaction and to minimize any delays in a purchase. As e-commerce technologies advance it is important to maintain this ease while assuring the security of the transaction. Currently, many businesses and organizations struggle with these improvements and for many it has given an edge to their competitors. One reason is that integrating such changes may be complicated as well as time consuming and expensive.
The functionality of minimizing the steps in a web-based checkout, especially when offered in conjunction with an email checkout, has high desirability in the marketplace to reduce the barriers to payment completion. All vendors are dependent on their customers completing their purchases as soon as possible; any purchase left incomplete is a lost opportunity for revenue. With the ability for a customer to checkout in the fewest number of clicks, without having to enter payment information a second time, the checkout process has become far simpler and easier for a customer to complete.